Category Archives: Car Culture

A Grace Space

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This Volvo “is aimed at the most demanding of customers: the independent woman in the premium segment.” So states the narrator for “YCC: Your Concept Car”, a look at creating an automobile specifically for women. Not to be confused with Rush “YYZ”, or F.U.B.U. “For Us By Us”, the YCC has such innovations as paint that is “just like a non-stick frying pan” and no easy access to the engine compartment. I assume this means that an independent woman in the “premium segment” couldn’t be bothered to know what’s going on with the car.

Over the soothing tones of new-age electronic jazz we learn it’s a “tough car” but not “brutal”. According to one of the women on the design team:

“You’re not buying a technical product; you’re buying by emotions.”

At :53 is my favorite part. A zoned out woman with a sweater casually draped around her shoulders wakes to tell us what our first impression of the car will be: “A feeling of, uh, grace… and, uh, space.” But she’s totally grace-less, speaking slowly and staring bug-eyed into the void.

VIA Sociological Images

BONUS: Trip out to the ambient music on this YCC promo video. Turn up the speakers for 9 minutes of hot buzz.

Your Dream Car, circa 1949

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The grandiosity of the narration in this video is hilarious. It’s a 10 minute film documenting the design and testing of 1949 Fords. It’s no ordinary car. It’s “Designed From the Inside Out”:

Here is the idea, a motorcar, conceived as a space for the riders, space that is to be enclosed and powered…

Yup, that’s a motorcar alright.

I love how @6:30 the cars get handed to the marketing guys and angels in heaven sing their approval.

The Magic Highway, circa 1958

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In this Disney film from the late 1950s we are introduced to the highway of tomorrow. I look at this and wonder if they could possibly have been that naive. An atomic reactor melting rock to tunnel through mountains? Complete robotic control of your car? Rocket powered cargo ships? Everything works smoothly and cleanly in the world of colorful cartoons. In real life I think there’d be problems with highways cantilevered on the side of the Grand Canyon.

Disney obviously hated the clutter, chaos and decentralization of the city. He dreamed of a centrally planned world where there were no conflicting interests, everyone agreed that his vision was ideal, and we could be whisked away from dirty reality and concentrate on shopping. No thanks, Walt.

The New Avanti Estate Wagon

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avanti_golfI finished rendering my Avanti Wagon and entered it into the Studebaker Design Museum show. I haven’t done much 3D before but Google SketchUp was really simple to use. It didn’t give me everything I wanted though, so I ended doing some vector drawing on top of the model to get it to look right. Not quite as cool as Top Gear’s Porsche Shooting Brake but I’m happy with how it all turned out.

I wrote some marketing copy and created two ads for the 2-door Avanti Estate. The ads were loosely based on these illustrations posted on theavanti.com. I love the rough, vignetted edges on those marker drawings and the colorful rendering given to the backgrounds.

The ads are available as PDF files by clicking the small images, or here and here.

avanti_speedI’m ashamed to confess my previous ignorance of the Avanti’s designer, Raymond Loewy. He was THE industrial designer of the mid-20th century. In addition to designing for Studebaker, he designed buses for Greyhound, logos for Nabisco, Shell and Exxon, and even the iconic bottles that distinguished Coca-Cola from other sodas through the end of the last century. His design for the exterior of Air Force One is still in use today.

While I was working on the renderings I discovered thatAvanti Motors still exists and creates a limited run of new cars out of Mexico and Canada. I don’t think they’re planning a wagon though.

CORRECTION: A reader informed me that Avanti ceased production in 2006. An interesting note from Wikipedia:

Michael Eugene Kelly, owner of Avanti Motors Corporation, was arrested by the FBI on Dec 22, 2006 in Florida. Kelly is suspected of running a $400 million Ponzi scheme from 1992–2004 and is in jail without bail facing mail fraud charges.

A New Avanti

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I’m trying my hand at car design for a contest at the Studebaker National Museum. They have an August 7 deadline for submissions for a Studebaker for the 21st century. My concept is for an Avanti Estate, essentially a shooting brake, with 2 doors and lots of cargo space in the rear. A sport coupe with room for golf bags and groceries. The side-profile above is a start, and I’m going to attempt a 3-D rendering using Google’s Sketch-Up.

The other day I saw a group of 2002 T-Birds cruising the highway and realized how their design could be a model for how smaller cars can be made to appeal to US consumers. Too often Detroit models itself after the Japanese, as evidenced in the new Camry-clone Chevy Malibu, seen at left. I think the Malibu is a handsome car, much better than the previous version, but is it distinctly Chevy?

Eric Felten wrote a recent column in the WSJ about the lack of American style in American cars these days. He writes:

One could argue that there’s a certain advantage to making bland and indistinguishable products when, like GM, you suffer from negative brand equity. And it certain is negative these days: Company executive Troy Clarke recently told the Washington Post about focus groups that had reacted positively to photos of the Chevy Malibu — that is, as long as the Chevy logo was obscured.

The other design route is to model cars off tanks and Humvees, with bulky, grotesque plastic trim, making many Dodge and Jeeps resemble armored bank vehicles. Now I’m waiting for the inevitable Detroit equivalent of the Honda Fit. But why not take a different tact and create something as cool as the T-Bird, add back seats, and sell it as a sleek, efficient American car. A Reliant K for a new generation.

Vintage VW for the Hausfrau

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Sociological Images  unearths an old VW ad that features the 1950s manufactured conflict between man and wife over what car to buy with the husband’s money.  Similar to the hen-pecked husband in this Volvo ad from the same era, the man in the photo above (who looks like he’s about to be castrated beheaded) desires the car that’s advertised. But his wife is reluctant, even hostile to the idea of driving it, so the husband must do the job of the car salesman in convincing his wife to allow him to buy the car he wants, even though he won’t be driving it.

“It looks like a bus.”

“I wouldn’t be caught dead in it.”

Do these sound familiar?  Your wife is not alone.  It is hard to convince some women what sense the VW Station Wagon makes.

Although the wife’s assumed place in the family is taxi and delivery driver, the ad implies that since she’s a woman she must be too dumb to understand the utility of a van. She only cares about how it looks.

According to the ad her duties include carting groceries, baby carriages, antique chests, tree saplings, Boy Scouts and camping supplies, all while enduring “bumper to bumper traffic on hot days.” Can’t she pick her own damn car? She’ll be picking up hubby’s dry-cleaning too, I’m sure. Dude, give your slave a break.

The kicker is the final statement, which, if there was any confusion, really puts the woman in her place:

“If these facts don’t convince her, tell her it’s only $2655 and you aren’t made of money.”

In other words, it’s really not a mutual decision with the husband making a convincing argument. He’s gonna buy her the cheap death-trap and she better get used to it.

Nowadays we know that car companies conduct focus groups with and conduct marketing campaigns for women specifically. In fact, Volvo recently created a concept car designed by and for women. “YCC”, or “Your Concept Car” included such innovations as a redesigned headrest to accomodate pony-tails and interior decor that can be swapped out depending on the season. Oh, how far we’ve come.

How do you hold onto your coffee/water/22 oz. Rockstar Energy Punch?

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Almost all owners of 240s have to figure out a plan to have a wet beverage in their car. Unless you’re one of the lucky few who have the rare armrest-mounted cup slings, you either put in some crappy aftermarket mini-bucket, or you shove your latte into the door pocket. Or you go thirsty and speed past all highway rest stops.

Cup holders seem as neccessary to modern vehicles as windshield wipers and cruise control (which I don’t have either). But it wasn’t always that way.

A few years ago Slate posted a short overview of the growth of the cupholder in the US auto industry. In the early part of the 20th century you’d have a tough time keeping a drink from spilling while driving on rough roads with your cars bone-jarring suspension. With the advent of eating in parked cars, auto makers added indented circles to the inside door of car gloveboxes. The 240s have them, but you’d have to put your tray back in the upright position if you encounter turbulence.

While American manufacturers developed holders in the armrests and between the seats of cars in the 80s, European car makers had no interest in giving up precious real estate for drinking, an activity that was meant to be enjoyed while stationary, preferably in front of a chic cafe.

Things have changed. According to this 2005 article about the eating and drinking habits of mobile Americans in the NY Times, Volvo has now accepted their multi-cup-holder fate:

Cup-holder ubiquity has reached the extreme in the Volvo XC90 sport-utility vehicle, which has 18 beverage holders – nine for standard cups and nine to hold large bottles. The vehicle seats seven passengers.

Back in 2004 Malcolm Gladwell interviewed cultural anthropologist G. Clotaire Rapaille about the seemingly irrational, reptilian responses people have to products, and the psychological basis for them. Speaking about cupholders, Rapaille asks and answers his own question:

What was the key element of safety when you were a child? It was that your mother fed you, and there was warm liquid.   That’s why cupholders are absolutely crucial for safety.   If there is a car that has no cupholder, it is not safe.   If I can put my coffee there, if I can have my food, if everything is round, if it’s soft, and if I’m high, then I feel safe.   It’s amazing that intelligent, educated women will look at a car and the first thing they will look at is how many cupholders it has.

So much for the heavy steel cage and collapsable front end of my 240; without cup-holders, I’m screwed.